U.S. Department of Energy Research News

Public Release: 1-Aug-2013
August 2013 story tips from Oak Ridge National Laboratory
The following are story ideas from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory for August 2013.

Public Release: 1-Aug-2013

Nature Climate Change
UCI-led team develops more accurate model of climate change's effect on soil
Scientists from UC Irvine and the National Center for Atmospheric Research have developed a new computer model to measure global warming's effect on soil worldwide that accounts for how bacteria and fungi in soil control carbon.

National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy

Public Release: 1-Aug-2013

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Geoscientists unearth mineral-making secrets potentially useful for new technologies
Proteins have gotten most of the attention in studies of how organic materials control the initial step of making the first tiny crystals that organisms use to build structures that help them move and protect themselves. Virginia Tech researchers have discovered that certain types of sugars, known as polysaccharides, may also control the timing and placement of minerals that animals use to produce hard structures.

National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy

Public Release: 1-Aug-2013

Cell
New insight into how brain 'learns' cocaine addiction
A team of researchers says it has solved the longstanding puzzle of why a key protein linked to learning is also needed to become addicted to cocaine. Results of the study, published in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal Cell, describe how the learning-related protein works with other proteins to forge new pathways in the brain in response to a drug-induced rush of the "pleasure" molecule dopamine.

NIH/National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH/National Institute of Mental Health, NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, NIH/National Cancer Institute, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, US Department of Energy

Public Release: 31-Jul-2013

Journal of Chemical Physics
VCU physicists discover theoretical possibility of large, hollow magnetic cage molecules
Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have discovered, in theory, the possibility of creating large, hollow magnetic cage molecules that could one day be used in medicine as a drug delivery system to non-invasively treat tumors, and in other emerging technologies.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 29-Jul-2013
Field test could lead to reducing CO2 emissions worldwide
An injection of carbon dioxide, or CO2, has begun at a site in southeastern Washington to test deep geologic storage. Battelle researchers based at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are injecting 1,000 tons of CO2 one-half mile underground to see if the greenhouse gas can be stored safely and permanently in ancient basalt flows.

Department of Energy

Public Release: 26-Jul-2013
Alternative-energy team wins US Department of Energy poster competition using only small words
Using only cartoons, drawings, photos, and the 1,000 most-commonly-used words in the English language, an alternative-energy team has taken first prize in a US DOE poster contest. The Penn State team's poster, titled "Powering Your Car with Sunlight," was selected as the overall winner out of 31 submissions. The poster explains how energy from the Sun is captured by plants and stored in plant cell walls as energy that could be used to power cars.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 25-Jul-2013

PLOS ONE
Microbial who-done-it for biofuels
A multi-institutional collaboration led by researchers with the Joint BioEnergy Institute and Joint Genome Institute has developed a promising technique for identifying microbial enzymes that can effectively deconstruct biomass into fuel sugars under refinery processing conditions.

US Department of Energy Office of Science

Public Release: 19-Jul-2013

Nano Letters
Purple sunlight eaters
A protein found in the membranes of ancient microorganisms that live in desert salt flats could offer a new way of using sunlight to generate environmentally friendly hydrogen fuel, according to a new study by researchers at the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 18-Jul-2013

Nano Letters
Stanford scientists break record for thinnest light-absorber
Stanford scientists have built the thinnest, most efficient absorber of visible light on record, a nanosize structure that could lead to less-costly, more efficient, solar cells.

US Department of Energy/Center on Nanostructuring for Efficient Energy Conversion, Marcus & Amalia Wallenberg Foundation

Public Release: 14-Jul-2013

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology
Key step in molecular 'dance' that duplicates DNA deciphered
Scientists have captured new details of the biochemical interactions necessary for cell division -- molecular images showing how the enzyme that unwinds the DNA double helix gets drawn to and wrapped around its target. The research may suggest ways for stopping cell division when it goes awry.

National Institutes of Health, UK Medical Research Council, Japan Society for Promotion of Science, Uehara Memorial Foundation

Public Release: 14-Jul-2013

Nature
Boldly illuminating biology's 'dark matter'
Microbial dark matter comprises the invisible infrastructure of life that can have profound influences on the most significant environmental processes. By employing next generation DNA sequencing of single cell genomes, researchers are systematically filling in the bacterial and archaeal tree of life's uncharted branches. An international collaboration led by the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute has published the most recent findings from exploring microbial dark matter July 14, 2013, in the journal Nature.

US Department of Energy Office of Science

Public Release: 11-Jul-2013

Proceedings of the Royal Society B
50-year-old assumptions about strength muscled aside
New understanding of where muscles get their power from turns 50 years of strength belief on its head. New insight could aid everything from bodybuilding to cardiac care.

Department of Energy, NIH, National Science Foundation

Public Release: 10-Jul-2013

Science Translational Medicine
Of aging bones and sunshine
Berkeley Lab researchers have shown that deficiencies in vitamin D -- the sunshine vitamin -- accelerates the aging of bone, reducing the quality and making it more susceptible to fracturing.

US Department of Energy Office of Science

Public Release: 10-Jul-2013
Wind power does not strongly affect greater prairie chickens, 7-year study finds
Wind power development does not ruffle the feathers of greater prairie chicken populations, according to a seven-year study from a Kansas State University ecologist and his team. They found that grassland birds are more affected by rangeland management practices and by the availability of native prairie and vegetation cover at nest sites.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 9-Jul-2013
NREL research earns 3 prestigious R&D 100 Awards
A new energy-efficient approach to building occupancy detection, a better way to detect heat loss in electric-vehicle batteries and a high-efficiency silicon solar cell � all developed or advanced at the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory -- have been named among this year's most significant innovations by R&D Magazine.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 9-Jul-2013
SWiFT commissioned to study wind farm optimization
The U.S. Department of Energy, Sandia National Laboratories and Texas Tech University commissioned the DOE/Sandia Scaled Wind Farm Technology facility today at the Reese Technology Center in Lubbock, Texas. The SWiFT is the first public facility of its kind to use multiple wind turbines to measure how wind turbines interact with one another in a wind farm.

Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

Public Release: 9-Jul-2013

Nature Communications
Wildfires may contribute more to global warming than previously predicted
Wildfires produce a witch's brew of carbon-containing particles, as anyone downwind of a forest fire can attest. But measurements taken during the 2011 Las Conchas fire near Los Alamos National Laboratory show that the actual carbon-containing particles emitted by fires are very different than those used in current computer models, providing the potential for inaccuracy in current climate-modeling results.

Department of Energy Office of Science

Public Release: 8-Jul-2013

New Phytologist
Getting to the root of the matter
Plant molecular biologists go looking for the genetics of poplar root growth in low-nitrogen soil and wind up with a model for genetic interaction.

US Department of Energy, US Department of Agriculture, Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research

Public Release: 2-Jul-2013
July 2013 story tips
These tips are about: ENERGY � Big voltage, little package METALLURGY - Graphite foam expansion ENERGY � CoNNECT promotes savings MATERIALS - Safer batteries CLIMATE - Blogging from the Arctic.

Public Release: 2-Jul-2013

Journal of the American Chemical Society
New catalyst could cut cost of making hydrogen fuel
A discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison may represent a significant advance in the quest to create a "hydrogen economy" that would use this abundant element to store and transfer energy.

US Department of Energy/Basic Energy Sciences Program

Public Release: 2-Jul-2013

FEBS Letters
Scientists identify promising antiviral compounds
Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have identified two promising candidates for the development of drugs against human adenovirus, a cause of ailments ranging from colds to gastrointestinal disorders to pink eye. The researchers sifted through thousands of compounds to determine which might block the effects of a key viral enzyme they had previously studied in atomic-level detail.

National Institutes of Health, Department of Energy Office of Science

Public Release: 27-Jun-2013

Science
This image could lead to better antibiotics
Berkeley Lab scientists have created an atomic-scale structure of a bacterial ribosome attached to a molecule that controls its motion. The image is also a possible roadmap to better antibiotics. Somewhere in its twists and turns could be a weakness that a new antibiotic can target.

Public Release: 27-Jun-2013
Power for seaports may be the next job for hydrogen fuel cells
Providing auxiliary hydrogen power to docked or anchored ships may soon be added to the list of ways in which hydrogen fuel cells can provide efficient, emissions-free energy. Hydrogen fuel cells are already powering mobile lighting systems, forklifts, emergency backup systems and light-duty trucks, among other applications. Now, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have found that hydrogen fuel cells may be both technically feasible and commercially attractive as a power source for ships at berth.

US Department of Energy

Public Release: 26-Jun-2013

Energy & Environmental Science
Getting the carbon out of emissions
MIT researchers propose method to remove carbon from emissions that could be more efficient than previous systems and easier to retrofit in existing power plants.

Siemens AG, US Department of Energy